Eric Glyman - Reimagining Corporate Finance - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 275]

My guest today is Eric Glyman, co-founder and CEO of Ramp. Ramp is best known for its corporate cards but it has a range of software products to help finance teams save money and time. Since its founding in 2019, the business has grown rapidly and was last valued at $8 billion. Eric and I discuss Ramp’s initial marketing wedge, how the business has dealt with such fast growth, and why they hold stablecoins on their balance sheet. Please enjoy my conversation with Eric Glyman.

 

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

 

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This episode is brought to you by Lemon.io. The team at Lemon.io has built a network of Eastern European developers ready to pair with fast-growing startups. We have faced challenges hiring engineering talent for various projects - and Lemon.io offered developers for one-off projects, developers for full start to finish product development, or developers that could be add-ons to the existing team. Check out lemon.io/patrick to learn more.

 

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Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. 

 

Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.

 

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Show Notes

[00:02:41] - [First question] - What was most notably awry about the industry before Ramp

[00:04:45] - Breakdown of Visa; The business model of the Black Card compared to the business card offering of Ramp

[00:08:40] - Causes and what he attributes their early success to

[00:11:30] - Description of Ramp’s software in the beginning and the evolution of co-building it

[00:16:34] - How he’s gone about building the company and team fast enough to handle their explosive growth curve

[00:19:47] - Approaching all aspects of recruiting and acquiring such great talent

[00:21:39] - Thoughts on the biggest mistake he’s made while building Ramp

[00:24:05] - Lessons learned about marketing that this journey has taught him

[00:26:13] - Learning to manage a senior team and advice for managing rapid growth

[00:28:58] - Unique aspects of Ramp’s approach to the financing side 

[00:32:56] - Why they are storing some of their balance sheet in stablecoins 

[00:34:47] - What the idealized end state of Ramp looks like

[00:37:26] - How the data and information he sees indicates trends in the economy writ large

[00:39:33] - Providing secondary liquidity to employees in a world where companies stay private for longer periods of time

[00:43:03] - Aspects of company building that are still unnecessarily hard

[00:44:55] - What has him most excited about Ramp in the next 12-18 months

[00:46:42] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him